Diablo creator David Brevik announced his new passion project, a 2D sandbox RPG called It Lurks Below, earlier this year, citing games like Terraria, Minecraft and, yes, Diablo as major influences. Today, he—and by he, I mean Graybeard Games, the indie studio Brevik founded—announced It Lurks Below's Steam Early Access launch: it's now available on Steam for $20.
It Lurks Below will remain in Early Access for a few months, but Brevik reckons it will fully release later this year. The current build is "full featured," he says, so he'll be working on fleshing out the end-game content during Early Access. And for those wondering, yes, the price will increase post-Early Access, though we don't know by how much.
As previously reported, It Lurks Below was born from both Brevik's love of games like Terraria and also his desire for more direction in them. "I wanted to make an RPG, with classes and leveling up, random items, where you get more and more powerful as you go down into the core of the world and fight baddies," he said. It sounds like he's made just that. Here's the Steam blurb:
"It Lurks Below is a retro-styled, 2D, action-oriented, survival RPG by David Brevik. Create a custom character and choose from several different classes to delve deep into the mysteries of what evil lurks below. Dig down and explore the randomly generated levels, find random items, and combat deadly monsters to get the answers."
Fighting and building in It Lurks Below look a lot like Terraria, but the best comparison is probably Starbound given its more structured tutorial and storyline. That said, Brevik says the RPG elements bring it closer to Diablo, Hellgate: London and even Marvel Heroes. In any case, it's an intriguing mishmash of tried-and-true ideas, and the early Steam reviews are all positive. Here's my favorite, from user HeapNudal:
"There's chickens 11/10"
And here are some new screenshots:
